Midway

 

“Half a loaf is better than none.” (Anonymous)

“Well begun is half done.” (Ancient Greek Philosopher, Aristotle)

“It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.” (Seahawks Football Coach, Pete Carroll)

“If you’re having half as much fun as me, then I’m having twice as much fun as you!” (Comedian, Ralf Leland)

So, you see, it doesn’t matter—at least half the time—to miss the start, as long as you can find your way to their middle, even if doing so requires you to ride a route that you would never have ridden if you weren’t on the lookout for the assembled.

But: 

“All’s well that ends well.”  (Poet and playwright, William Shakespeare)

It wasn’t the longest of rides (for me), nor was it the warmest of fires, but it was still plenty of everything, with some water, some fire, some air, some earth, and even some ether: all five elements coming together to be plenty enough, even halfway.

Just like this.

Slow

Thanks to the gusting southerly wind—and the traffic lights—it was the slowest descent of Second Avenue ever.

But that’s okay.

Because that same gusting wind—although not the traffic lights—was responsible for stoking the smallish campfire to a forge-like hotness, and gave rise, ultimately, to the always hoped-for, but only occasionally-realized, fountain of boiling accelerant: always a marker (though neither a necessary nor sufficient condition) of a swell night out on two wheels.

It was the last nighttime meet-up of the year, thanks to the imminent arrival of this weekend’s springing forward, which means for the next six months or so, it will be just a little trickier to find a place to relieve oneself early on during the ride, which might be TMI, as it’s called, but is, nevertheless, an observable fact of life in the Great Northwest.

Just as the observation that—at least in my experience—it had been months, if not more than a year, since Ye Olde Wading Poole Firepit by the shores of Lake Washington, just south of Thee Poison Oak Farme had been visited, led to the observable fact that there was probably no better place to be at the time, if I do say so myself, and I do.

So many possibilities present themselves at the outset of an evening and you’ve got to shuffle through the options until one escapes the deck and presents itself.  

It can be less-than-exotic to find oneself, therefore, on a well-trodden (that is, pedaled) route, but there’s something to be said for rolling down streets that are familiar to one’s daily responsibilities in a different frame of mind.  

With the right perspective—and the proper dosage of various varieties—the usual can seem quite unusual, and unusually attractive as a result.

And, at the end of the evening, if there you are, slowly grinding up a street you grind up several times a workweek, you're going plenty fast enough.